Month: January 2011

Virtual catalogue is slowly growing

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This is just a little update on where I am with moving entries of material from the blog  Virtual catalogue I set up, to the searchable catalogue on Conduction’s website at

http://www.e-conduction.org/?page_id=115

 Recently there were some technical problems which meant that some entries had mysteriously been deleted. It has been sorted out now by my wonderful technical guy, Ben Foulger, so I can carry on adding items. This will take a little longer to do for a while as first  I have to check each one on my list to see if it is still there or needs re-adding. Very irritating, but I am getting through this stage gradually. I have spent some time today on adding more material to the  catalogue on the Conduction website and now there are 150 items.

Found it!

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Andrew Sutton has been looking for an article on Conductive Education published in December, and I am very pleased to say that I have managed to obtain a copy which I will let him have.

This article is titled ‘Conductive Education: appraising the evidence’  and is published in Educational Psychology in Practice, the journal of the Association of Educational Psychologists (full reference at the end of this posting.)
It includes the results of a literature search on two databases, neither educational, and produces these results  in a table. Most of the results are quite old , dating back to the early 1990s ad I can’t help wondering if the authors visited the National Library of  Conductive Education (which contains more up to date material)  or are even aware of its existence.  Still, I am very pleased to be able to say that despite not having the resources around me I was able to track this down. One up for the Librarians, I think!



Tuersley-Dixon, L. and Frederickson, N. (2010) Conductive Education: appraising the evidence. Educational Psychology in Practice , 26(4), pp.253-373.

Libraries under threat

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A couple of years ago I decided that I would stop buying so many books as the house was filling up with them, so now I only buy what I think I will read again or use often. On that basis my  my cookery book collection is still growing!
Because of this decision I have been using my local public library regularly for fiction and any reference books I don’t have at home. In the process I have discovered all the extra services available now such as computers, scanners and the facility to print and copy documents if required – for a very small charge. This was a godsend when my computer ‘died’ last October. Wonderful.
This weekend I heard that the Government is thinking of closing a large number of such local libraries as part of its spending revue. I was horrified as libraries take up such a small amount of local budgets and fufill a great need. Protests all over the country are on the way, I believe.
This after reading Andrew’s blog about the Hungarian Government and its plans for the Foundations, one of which runs the Peto Institute.
What will happen? What will happen to the Peto Institute Library too?
Worrying times ahead.

Results of searching for articles in Cerebral Palsy Magazine

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I spent a couple of hours yesterday searching the wayback machine
This is an Internet archive of ‘snapshots’ taken of websites’ pages on given days and sometimes also includes material that is linked to on those pages. All you need to know to get started is the URL of the site you are looking for.  It is a wonderful tool for finding material that has been removed from the Internet but can be a bit hit and miss as I have discovered.
I was hunting for certain articles  in Cerebral Palsy Magazine. There were four articles on Conductive Education published in the magazine between 2003 and 2008 but I was only able to find the full text for one of them, the one about conductor training written by Andrew Sutton in 2004. This has now been entered in the virtual catalogue. Not a bad percentage, I suppose but still disappointing.
I hope to be able to track the others down by other means – if possible.

Demise of Cerebral Palsy Magazine ?

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It looks as though there has been another casualty in these hard times as all traces of  Cerebral Palsy Magazine appear to have been removed from the Internet. This journal was started in June 2003 and appeared quarterly covering all aspects of cerebral palsy and the many ways of helping those with the condition.
I found its disappearance by accident as I was looking for links to the articles on Conductive Education which were published in it. No reply to an email sent to Richard Koscielny, one of  the founders and editors, has been received  so far, so I will try the  Wayback machine and hopefully that will come up trumps.

If anyone has any information about what has happened, please do get in touch.

I will let you know how I get on.

A few words of good cheer

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I received a very welcome response to my blog about starting to collect together a Library, which I know will be useful for answering enquiries
http://www.gillian-maguire.info/2011/01/new-year-new-library.html

Anne Wittig, a conductor writes:

Just a quick email saying Happy New Year and I do hope your personal library will grow. I do hope to get more books together and build more on my own. Anyhow, I just wanted to say thanks for setting up the Virtual Library. I browsed a bit on it today and its awesome. Love it. It definitely helps people like me, who are away from big relevant libraries. Thanks again.

I do not get much feed back especially some such as this – very heartening, Anne, thank you very much.

http://www.movingaheadcc.com/index.html andhttp://www.blogger.com/goog_912796277

Anne has recently started her own consultancy in British Columbia and also finds time to writes a blog. Do have a look at

So I am doubly pleased she has found time to contact me in this way.

Exciting new venture in Sweden

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Some good news to start 2011 – Eszter Horvath Tothne writes from Sweden:

Move & Walk today received the permission to start a secondary school (High school) for children with special needs with Conductive Education!!!! Big step!!!!!!

Quite what is happening is not clear yet but more information will appear on the website http://www.movewalk.se/  in the next week or so.

A good start to the new year !

New year, new library?

Gillian Maguire Leave a comment
All over the world people have been celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another. Possibilities of new opportunities, chances and developments of current projects have been in the minds of many.
What will 2011 hold for Conductive Education and what will it hold for the knowledge and information needed to develop it?

It is nearly two years since the librarian’s post at the Foundation for Conductive Education was made redundant and I left, but I am still regularly asked what is happening to the Library. I have to answer ‘ I don’t know’. I also don’t know if this question is put to those that should know, those who are in charge, and what they say, if asked.

All I hear is bits and pieces through the grapevine and this is what I have heard:
  • there was an electrical fire last summer but stock was not damaged.
  •  student volunteers have been recruited to help in the Library – doing what I have no idea
  • there is no prospect of employing a library professional in the near future.
  • the Library is no longer available all-year round
To me  this means that the library is no longer a ‘living’ library. Those responsible cannot possibly have the time or expertise to carry it forward, so to me it is now just a collection of material accumulated from the early 1980s to the  early years of the 21st century.
 Shame. This was a jewel in the Foundation’s crown.
2011 seems a good time to announce that I have started to build my own library of material to use to answer enquiries that I receive. Hopefully this will be really useful to me and others in the future  if  passed on at a later date or ‘joined up’ with another library. So far, it consists of only a single bookshelf and a shoebox full of papers, press cuttings, etc and books, brochures and leaflets  I picked up in Hong Kong has given it quite a boost!
If people have anything that they no longer want then  I should love to have it. Photocopies or electornic copies of possibly useful materials would also be most welcome. These could be a book, document, centre brochure, conference programme, video, DVD, press cutting – anything. I would be happy to refund postage ( within certain limits of course!)

Just contact me to discuss arrangements.